The Materials Microcharacterization Collaboratory: Scientific Collaboration over the Internet

The Materials
Microcharacterization Collaboratory (MMC) was created last
year as a pilot project within the US Department of Energy's DOE2000 program.
DOE2000 is a new initiative to fundamentally change the way
scientists work together. The DOE2000 program has three main
goals: improved ability to solve DOE's complex scientific
problems, increased R&D productivity and efficiency, and
enhanced access to DOE resources by R&D partners. One of the
strategies to meet these goals is the construction of national
collaboratories. These provide the integration on the Internet of
unique or expensive DOE research facilities and expertise for
remote collaboration, experimentation, production, software
development, modeling, or measurement. In addition,
collaboratories will benefit researchers by providing tools for
video conferencing, shared data-viewing, and collaborative
analysis. Cooperative pilots projects, jointly funded by DOE2000
and a scientific program area, are expected to lead to clear
success in the scientific environment: they will provide new
capabilities and will increase the efficiency of doing the work
(reduce travel, increase communication, provide for sharing data
among formerly disparate environments, and so forth).

While the MMC is centered around electron microscopy, beam
line facilities also play an important role in the project.
Included in this collaboratory are the Neutron
Residual Stress Facility at ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor
(HFIR), the X14A
beamline at BNLs National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS)
and potentially the UNICAT
beamline at ANLs Advanced Photon Source (APS). Microscopy
is represented by five DOE BES and EE funded electron microscopy
centers located at ANL, LBNL, ORNL (2) and the University of
Illinois. Also included is the National Advanced
Manufacturing Test Bed (NAMT) program of the National
Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST). Together, the
participating Centers represent virtually every technique which
employs electrons, ions, photons (including x-rays), and neutrons
to elucidate the microstructure (internal or external) of
inorganic materials. It is the intent of the MMC to join these
centers of excellence into a single on-line interactive Materials
Microcharacterization Collaboratory and thus increase the
utilization of these capabilities while greatly decreasing the
time constant associated with multidisciplinary materials
research.

The Industrial Partners in the MMC are an important part of
the collaboratory. Through their cooperation, technical and
financial assistance we will be able to greatly accelerate the
objectives of this project. The current industrial partners are
Gatan Inc., R. J. Lee Group, EMiSPEC Systems Inc., Philips
Electronic Instruments, Hitachi Instruments, Inc., Japan Electron
Optics Laboratories-USA, Sun Microsystems, and Graham Technology
Solutions. More industrial partners are expected to join.